US-CERT warns of ongoing cyber attacks aimed at ERP applications

The report published by the US-CERT reference analysis conducted by Digital Shadows and Onapsis, titled “ERP Applications Under Fire.“

“Digital Shadows Ltd. and Onapsis Inc. have released a report describing an increase in the exploitation of vulnerabilities in Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) applications. ERP applications help organizations manage critical business processes—such as product lifecycle management, customer relationship management, and supply chain management.” reads the US-CERT bulletin.

“An attacker can exploit these vulnerabilities to obtain access to sensitive information.”

Unfortunately, there is an impressive number of systems exposed online without necessary security measures, it is quite easy for attackers to find online exploits that could be used to hack them.

“The findings shed light into how nation-state actors, cybercriminals and hacktivist groups are actively attacking these applications and what organizations should
do to mitigate this critical risk.” states the report.

“We observed detailed information on SAP hacking being exchanged at a major Russian-speaking criminal forum, as well as individuals interested in acquiring SAP HANA-specific exploits on the dark web. This goes in hand with an observed 100% increase of public exploits for SAP and Oracle ERP applications over the last three years, and a 160% increase in the activity and interest in ERP-specific vulnerabilities from 2016 to 2017.”

Below the key findings of the report:

Hacktivist groups are actively attacking ERP applications to disrupt critical business operations and penetrate target organizations.

The experts uncovered at least nine operations carried out by hacktivist groups that targeted ERP applications, including SAP and Oracle ERP. The attackers aimed at sabotaging of the applications and compromising business-critical applications.

Cybercriminals have evolved malware to target internal, “behind-the-firewall” ERP applications.

Malware authors have improved their code to target ERP applications to steal SAP user credentials and use them in cyber espionage campaigns.

Nation-state sponsored actors have targeted ERP applications for cyber espionage and sabotage.

Experts collected captured evidence of cyberattacks attributed to nation-state actors.

There has been a dramatic increase in the interest in exploits for SAP
applications, including SAP HANA, in dark web and cybercriminal forums.

Experts observed a spike in the interest in exploits for SAP applications in the Dark Web.

Attacks vectors are evolving, still mainly leveraging known ERP vulnerabilities vs. zero-days.

Threat actors leverage continues to prefer well-known vulnerabilities instead of using zero-day exploits for their attacks.

Cloud, mobile and digital transformations are rapidly expanding the ERP attack surface, and threat actors are taking advantage.

Researchers have identified more than 17,000 SAP and Oracle ERP applications exposed on the internet, most of them operated by world’s largest commercial and government organizations.

“Many of these exposed systems run vulnerable versions and unprotected ERP components, which introduce a critical level of risk.” states the report.

Leaked information by third parties and employees can expose internal ERP applications.
Researchers discovered over 500 SAP configuration files on insecure file repositories exposed online, as well as employees sharing ERP login credentials in public forums. Such kind of information is a precious gift for hackers.

Experts recommend organizations to carefully review configurations for known vulnerabilities, change default passwords and enforce strong passwords for users.

Pierluigi Paganini

(Security Affairs – ERP applications, hacking)

[adrotate banner=”5″]

[adrotate banner=”13″]